From: STATE
SUPERINTENDENTSent: Friday, January 31, 2003 1:56 PMTo:
'Regional Superintendents and Special Education Directors District
Superintendents 'Subject: Weekly Message from State Superintendent
Robert Schiller 1-31-03

Good Afternoon.

This week’s message reports on an
upcoming special State Board meeting to address another district’s voluntary
request for creation of a Financial Oversight Panel, on the schedule for
legislative hearings on the ISBE FY04 budget and on the recommendations of the
Assessment and Accountability Task Force on IMAGE, the IAA and an AYP model. It
also gives you advance notice regarding a survey on districts’ finances we will
be sending superintendents next week.

SpecialState
Board Meeting on February
6, 2003

The Illinois State Board of
Education will hold a special meeting via teleconference on
Thursday, February 6,
2003,
at 10:00 a.m.The agenda will include discussion of
the following two items:

A proposed voluntary
financial oversight panel for CairoSchool
District #1. The Board of Education of Cairo School
District #1, at a special meeting held on January 23, 2003, voted unanimously to petition,
on a voluntary basis, the Illinois State Board of Education for a Financial
Oversight Panel and emergency financial assistance.

Legislative
recommendations from the Board Governmental Relations Committee.Specific recommendations of the
committee will be posted to the ISBE website on Monday, February
3.

Those wishing to attend may do so at
the State Board offices either in Springfield or
Chicago.

Assessment
and Accountability Task Force

At its last meeting, the Task Force
approved several subcommittee recommendations for improvements to the IMAGE
assessment.These recommendations
include the following:

Modify the IMAGE
assessment and reporting procedures to ensure that by 2006, IMAGE mirrors the
ISAT and PSAE grade levels in reading, mathematics and writing and by 2008, in
science.

Add/modify reading,
mathematics, writing and science assessments consistent with the adopted
schedule for modifications to ISAT.

Provide item analysis
of IMAGE results and distribute to schools at the same time as ISAT and PSAE
results.

Ensure that the
achievement categories on IMAGE are equivalent to
ISAT/PSAE.

On a case-by-case
basis, allow Illinois students to take IMAGE for up to
five years (using language consistent with NCLB).

Develop a grade 2
IMAGE assessment as an option for school districts.

Ensure that the
reporting system is understandable to parents of English language learners
(ELL).

Responding to the uniqueness of the
ELL subgroup, the Task Force also adopted a proposed “hybrid
value-added/absolute AYP model.”This model will look at two measures to determine whether a
school/district is making adequate progress for this
subgroup.

Did absolute
percentage of ELL students meet Standards and equal or exceed the statewide
goal?

Do average ELL
learning gains achieved by the school/district ELL students meet targeted
gains?

The absolute component (#1) will be
used to trigger NCLB
consequences, such as school choice and supplemental services.The value-added component (#2) will be
used to determine the nature of other NCLB
consequences.

At this same meeting, the IAA
subcommittee reported on its progress in designing long-range improvements to
this assessment.Although no formal
recommendations were presented, the group indicated that it is leaning toward
the use of an “events-based” assessment model rather than the current year-long
record of student information.The
“events-based” model, which is in use in several other states, would increase
the comparability of IAA to the other one-time state assessments (ISAT, PSAE and
IMAGE) and reduce the record-keeping burden.The subcommittee also reported that the
portfolio concept remains popular, especially with parents, and that it could be used
with the “events-based” assessment model.

Reminder:The next full Task Force meeting will be
Monday, March 10, 2003, in
Springfield.

Legislative
Hearings on ISBE FY04 Budget

The House Committee on
Appropriations for Elementary & Secondary Education will hold a series of
hearings related to ISBE’s proposed FY04 budget. All hearings will begin at
2:00 p.m. in Room 118 of the
CapitolBuilding unless notice of other arrangements
is given. The committee has set dates for five
hearings:

February 4,
2002:Presentation from ISBE on the Board’s proposed budget for FY04 and “State
of Education” address focusing on the fiscal
state of affairs for Illinois K–12 public
education.

February 18,
2003ISBE
presentation on the school aid formula and poverty grants. Status update on Hold
Harmless and the foundation level.

March 4,
2003ISBE presentation on federal funding and retirement funds.

March 11,
2003Relevant interest groups invited to testify.

Survey
for Superintendents

Next week by e-mail, we will send to
superintendents a survey we hope you will all take the time to complete and
return through the ROE. It will ask you to describe the effects of reduced
funding/increased costs on the education services offered by districts.Having this kind of information will
help us all as we begin the budget process in
earnest.